Students' self-determined motivation for becoming a physical education teacher

The study provides analysis of the motivation students to choose physical education teaching as a profession. Students' self-determined motivation for becoming physical education teachers was investigated using The Academic Motivation Scale (AMS). 311 1st-4th year students of four Lithuanian universities participated in the study were males and 37.3% were females). They were pre-service teachers ofphysical education that had been admitted to fulltime studies in the field of Sport Education within the group ofEducation and Training Studies. The findings show that both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is inherent to the choice of the profession and training for the future profession of pre-service teachers of physical education, whereas the scores ofmotivation differ at different study years. The results ofthe research show that third year students have the highest intrinsic motivation, whereas the lowest level of amotivation is among first year students. In general, females returned higher scores for all motivation types than males. The results revealed that the scores of all subscales of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation were the lowest among high performance athletes, whereas the scores of their amotivation were higher than the scores of lower performance athletes, though statistically significant differences were not determined. The research results point to the development of the study process by choosing strategies that promote students' intrinsic motivation, as well as further investigation of the shifts in students' motivation throughout . the studies and their dependence on the quality of the process of studiesVytauto Didžiojo universitetasŠvietimo akademij